H 



HARDWOOD RECORD 



occupied by the Soper Lumber Company. The 

 Leavitt Lumber Company will build a hand- 

 some office at this location, also barns and a 

 shed capable of housing 2,000,000 feet of kiln 

 dried lumber. 



u'hile the company handles every variety 

 of hardwood used in this market, it is also 

 a considerable dealer in white pine, yellow 

 pine and cypress. The distinct specialty is 

 northern and southern oak. It manufactures 

 at its Frederic, Wis., plant less than one- 

 fourth of its annual handlings. In addition 

 to the stocks carried in the Chicago yards the 

 house groups hardwoods at several southern 

 points for direct shipment to its trade. The 

 annual sales are from 30,000,000 to •S.J.Odd.di. 

 feet. 



Herbert B. Leavitt is a tall, rather slender 

 man of dark complexion. His keen black eyes 

 and firm mouth impress one with his vigor of 

 mind and alert disposition. In the conduct 



of his business he is a stickler for absolute 

 integrity even in the smallest details, and his 

 office and yards speak in no uncertain manner 

 his orderliness and comprehensive vigilance 

 in every department. 



He is married and has two children. His 

 one recreation is an occasional trip in which 

 he often combines business with pleasure, and 

 now and then takes a few days off with dog 

 and gun, as he is an enthusiastic sportsman. 

 He is fond of good horses and keeps a high- 

 class stepper for his personal use. As a mem- 

 ber of the Chicago Athletic Club he is very 

 popular, where he counts his friends by the 

 membership roll. 



Endowed with solid sense and a natural 

 suavity and possessing prudence and fore- 

 sight and a thorough knowledge of his trade, 

 Herbert B. Leavitt is one of the most success- 

 ful hardwood factors of the lumber industrv. 



Piling Hardwood Lumber. 



Having given due consideration, in the 

 last issue of the Hardwood Record, to the 

 subject of piling lumber so as to get a free 

 circulation of air under and through the pile 

 to prevent bluing or sap staining in the early 

 stages of drying, the next stej) to be consid- 

 ered is piling with a view to drying in the 

 best shape possible, consistent with a reason- 

 able amount of care and expense. To ac- 

 complish this it is necessary to study not only 

 the nature of the wood, but the effects pro- 

 duced on it by various elements in the 

 process of drying. Regarding tupelo gum, 

 for example, which is one of the most re- 

 fractory woods in its tendency to warp and 

 twist, some men who have studied this wood 

 claim that if the logs could be seasoned be- 

 fore they are cut into lumber, the lumber 

 would remain perfectly flat. There may 

 be logic in this idea, but it does not show 

 up well under careful examination. It is 

 impracticable in the average sawmill and is 

 worthy of consideration only in connection 

 with the study of wood. It might be as- 

 sumed that if a gimi log were bored througli 

 the heart, then steamed and seasoned, it 

 would by careful manipulation stand the sea- 

 soning without very serious cracking, but the 

 strains set up in the log would be greater 

 than those set up in the drying of ordinary 

 lumber cut from the green log. 



As a general rule the sapwood or outside 

 face of the board shrinks in drying more 

 than the heart side, so the tendency is to 

 warp toward the sap side of the board, which 

 will be true of a thin board, a thick plank or 

 ronnd log, and if the grain twists it takes on 

 various forms. This tendency, however, can 

 be overcome by devising ways to hold the 

 board flat while it is in process of season- 

 ing. A pretty clear idea of this matter may 

 be gained by making a study of bent wood 

 work, "When a piece of wood is bent after 

 steaming, one of two things must happen : 

 either the wood along the outer circumference 

 of the curve in which it is bent must stretch, 



ur that on the inner side must compress to 

 make up for the difl'erence in the length of 

 the outer and inner sides of the circle rep- 

 resented by the thickness of the wood. It 

 has been demonstrated again and again until 

 it is a well known trade axiom that wiind 

 will not stretch, either lengthwise or cross- 

 wise. Hence, in process of drying we must 

 tigure on the denser side of the wood com- 

 pressing enough to take care of the shrink- 

 age of the sap side or the parts which tend 

 to shrink most, otherwise cracks will result 

 originating on the side of most shrinkage, 

 just as breakage results in bending wood 

 / when a knot or something on the inner side 

 of the bend prevents compression, for the - 

 .strain in attempting to stretch wood sim- 

 ply breaks it. Wood has certain elastic prop- 

 erties, varying somewhat in the ditterent 

 species, which are attributable, however, to 

 compression and the tendency of the com- 

 pressed parts to return to their normal con- 

 dition, and not to the stretching of the fibers 

 at all. Under the treatment of seasoning in 

 the compressed condition the wood gradu.illy 

 loses its tendency to rebound, and when a 

 .stick of wood has been held in shape untU 

 thoroughly dry it will ordinarily retain the 

 bent shape, unless moisture or other condi- 

 tions bring a return of life to the wood and 

 awaken the dormant tendency to rebound, 

 when the wood straightens out a little, never, 

 however, returning to its original state. 



The conditions existent in bent woodwork 

 are true in an empha.sined way of what ob- 

 tains in piling lumber to season it straight 

 and overcome its natural tendency to warp. 

 The point to bear in mind is that that part 

 of the wood inclined to shrink must be 

 humored by allowing it to compress the part 

 with less shrinking tendencies. The queslion 

 arises here — how can lumber be held in a true 

 (lat plane and at the same time have room 

 to shrink! There is no ideal method of ac- 

 complishing this; the nonrcst thing to the 

 ideal is the modern process of drying veneer. 



A few years ago the veneer dry press tised 

 consisted of a series of hollow iron plates 

 heated by steam, between which were placed 

 the sheets of veneer for drying. When filled, 

 the plates were clamped together on the 

 \eneer by toggle levers and when the stock 

 was about half dry, the, plates were released 

 a few )noments to allow the steam and gas 

 to escape and the wood to shrink and adjust 

 itself to its half -dried condition, when they 

 were clamped again and held firmly until dry. 

 Following this came the modern and more 

 perfect process of passing sheets of veneer 

 through a series of live rollers encased in 

 a long box and supplied with heat from a 

 fan and steam coil to drive out the moisture. 

 This forms a series of continuous clamping 

 and releasing, permitting the sheets to shrink 

 as they dry and keeping them flattened so 

 that when they come through they are not 

 only thoroughly dry, but smooth and straight 

 as cardboard and free from la-acks. 



Although a method of piling lumber, espe- 

 cially for air drying, which will give perfect 

 results, is yet to be discovered, there is room 

 for improvement over the piling seen in the 

 yards of many mill men. If a board is to be 

 held straight it must be clamped under pres- 

 sure, so to speak, and forced to retain a 

 straight plane during the course of drying, 

 hi the ideal process it should be clamped 

 through its entire length. This cannot 

 be done, however, and permit the air to cir- 

 culate, but what can be done is to use more 

 than two or throe cross strips to sixteen- 

 foot lengths, many more, in fact, if the 

 right kind of strips are used, and used in 

 the right manner. If we should cross strip 

 with green boards four, six or eight inches 

 wide and put five, six or seven of them in 

 sixteen feet, it is a foregone conclusion that 

 pretty badly stained lumber would be the 

 consequence, but if instead of this green 

 lumber dry strips, say from one to two 

 inches wide, are used, they can be placed 

 every two or three feet in the length of the 

 pile with good results. Something depends, 

 of course, on the manner of placing them, 

 and it should go without saying that the 

 strip for each succeeding layer should be 

 placed directly over the strip below so that 

 it would serve to clamp the lumber tlat in- 

 stead of tending to bend the board. At the 

 ends the strips should come Hush so as to re- 

 tard the natural tendency of the ends of the 

 lumber to dry out quicker than the body and 

 cause checking. Everyone knows that, of 

 course, and also that it is impossible under 

 ordinary conditions to get the lumber even 

 at both ends of the pile. So it is piled even 

 at one end, the other left to take care of 

 itself. But many, because of this unavoid- 

 able condition, on the theory that one end of 

 the pile must be uneven, use all lengths in the 

 same pile, making the back end very ragged, 

 I'or which there is no excuse whatever. The 

 variation of a few inches in the length of 

 stock cannot be avoided, except where the 

 lumber all comes through a trimmer, but be- 

 cause this is true is no excuse for such ragged 



